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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

cnn.com

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Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#351

Post by mattnewton »

estimator7292 wrote: post #303
smallerize wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounding sales tax on each item will often result in a different price than rounding once for the total. The store will collect the wrong amount of tax that way.

Come on, this is not complicated. It's elementary algebra. You sum the rounded prices, then add a credit or surcharge of 2 cents to make the tax come out to a round number. The tax is on the actual, real amount in your transaction subtotal. You are charged sales tax on the actual, real money you pay for the entire transaction . Then you multiply by 1.06 or whatever the tax rate is. That's how sales tax works. If one…

You have to do this algebra per state and locale, and your reward is higher advertised prices than the shop next door. I think you both underestimate the problem and overestimate everyone involved in retail, especially the consumer.

I’m not saying it’s hard, I’m saying there is enough friction where it’s just not going to happen without legislation mandating it.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#352

Post by wat10000 »

jacobgkau wrote: post #281
b112 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

Sales taxes already result in rounding, which the store could try to take advantage of. They never do. They set prices to end in 99 because it's psychologically more attractive. That will most likely continue. If they're required to price in multiples of 5, we'll see prices ending in 95.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#353

Post by kube-system »

b112 wrote: post #252
Night_Thastus wrote: post #141

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a c…

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

There are already stores in the US that are rounding their transactions because of the penny shortage that is already happening. Many are just simply rounding all transactions down to the nearest $0.05.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#354

Post by wat10000 »

Uvix wrote: post #294
jkaplowitz wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, that sounds like a yes, they could round up or down SNAP purchases just like cash purchases.

No, because they'd still be paying less/more than people paying with credit cards, debit cards, or checks.

Round them all. Why is this so difficult?

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#355

Post by zahlman »

The last ever American penny (as the article text clarifies). Don't any other countries with a "dollar" use the same name for their 1-cent pieces?

> The penny costs nearly four cents to mint, more than the coin’s worth.

Wow. I think it was only something like 1.5c (in the local market) when Canada gave up on them.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#356

Post by drdec »

burningChrome wrote: post #346
quantified wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the US attempted to transition to the metric system, gas stations raised their prices per unit volume and the American consumer was convinced that the metric system was bad. I have family that think metric is bad because some fringe people thought there should be 10 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour, also something like 10 months a year, and the whole thing is bad because some awkward ideas were floated.…

>> and we won't have $100 bills anymore. Heard some pundits on the radio talking about the elimination of the penny and one of them who worked at the Secret Service as an analyst talked about why the US paper money only goes to $100 bills. He said it was to reduce criminals and illicit activity and criminals having to store it. He related the story of Pablo Escobar's brother or cousin who was the accountant for the c…

I'm pretty sure the OP was talking about a far future where a $100 bill is worth less than the current penny

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#357

Post by 542458 »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #267
b112 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

Rounding is such a weird boogeyman to me because people are like "the companies are just going to use it to get more money from the customers" but, they're doing that anyway. They don't need this excuse to raise prices they'll just do it anyway. Same thing when people complain that raising minimum wage will increase prices, meanwhile prices have increased for 50 years completely separate from wages. They don't need t…

> If they want companies to not raise prices the only answer is regulation

Or competition. Consumer electronics are much cheaper than they were in the past, and that's not because of regulation. (To be clear, I'm not saying that regulation is wrong or anything, I'm saying that "use regulation to lower prices" and "remove barriers to competition to lower prices" are both tools in the toolbox.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#358

Post by jacobgkau »

ivanbakel wrote: post #344
jacobgkau wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never mind this: When was the last time you bought something in person, in cash, and bought only one thing? Just think it through for a second. "In cash" is entirely separate from the rounding debate and is just the "people use cards, anyway" argument. It's not relevant to this discussion. This discussion is about cash. I do buy single items at stores sometimes. > If you buy two things at $1.03 or $1.04, it's $2.06…

> Where's the law preventing stores from imposing an accounting fee for multi-item purchases, conveniently totaling a few cents? Where’s the law preventing someone from doing this right now? I don’t think this cynicism is justified. Similarly, if places are willing to price stuff at $1.03 for the few extra cents they’ll collect some of the time, then they can just raise prices on 99c items right now to $1 to collect…

> Where’s the law preventing someone from doing this right now? I don’t think this cynicism is justified.

You don't think businesses take advantage of situations for more profit?

Take this year's tariffs as an example. As you may've heard, UPS is charging customs brokerage fees of dozens or hundreds of dollars on top of the actual tariff payment; identical shipments sent via FedEx or DHL are only charged a few dollars for the service of customs brokerage, so we know UPS's actual costs for providing that service aren't that high. They saw a situation where consumers would be confused about prices and took advantage of it to make a lot more money by simply charging a lot more than they need to.

"But where's the law saying they couldn't have just raised their prices by hundreds of dollars without tariffs? Where's the law?!" There wasn't one, they could've raised their prices for international shipments before the tariffs happened. But consumers would have noticed a lot more and accepted it a lot less. They took advantage of the situation because the situation allowed them to get away with it.

> Similarly, if places are willing to price stuff at $1.03 for the few extra cents they’ll collect some of the time, then they can just raise prices on 99c items right now to $1 to collect the extra cent, which they don’t do because such prices have a psychological effect on the consumer that outweighs the small gain.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. You admitted the $0.99 number has a psychological effect that outweighs the $0.01 gain of charging the extra cent. That would be the reason they don't do that. It's not super relevant to the discussion of whether rounding can/will be gamed.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#359

Post by MrMorden »

mynameisash wrote: post #168
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

> the transition was a non-issue I'm reminded of when Minnesota passed the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) close to 20 years ago. (Some) restauranteurs - along with the GOP - made pronouncements about how this would destroy the economy. No one would go to out to eat or for a drink again. Doom and gloom. Last I checked, there are plenty of restaurants open in the state, and things are going fine. In fact, just…

People overestimated the importance that smokers placed on being able to smoke in public.

A Japanese airline (Air Do) tried reintroducing the smoking section in the 1990s. It did not go well for them, and Japan's tobacco use rate was several times the US's.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#360

Post by tempestn »

burningChrome wrote: post #346
quantified wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the US attempted to transition to the metric system, gas stations raised their prices per unit volume and the American consumer was convinced that the metric system was bad. I have family that think metric is bad because some fringe people thought there should be 10 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour, also something like 10 months a year, and the whole thing is bad because some awkward ideas were floated.…

>> and we won't have $100 bills anymore. Heard some pundits on the radio talking about the elimination of the penny and one of them who worked at the Secret Service as an analyst talked about why the US paper money only goes to $100 bills. He said it was to reduce criminals and illicit activity and criminals having to store it. He related the story of Pablo Escobar's brother or cousin who was the accountant for the c…

Though I think the parent means, eventually in the (hopefully) distant future, we'll get rid of the $100 bill because it will be worth too little.
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